


Disunion

by Urloth (CollyWobbleKiwi)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Featuring Finwe the first true Insane King of the Noldor (he was better at hiding it), Gen, about Finwe and how he's a favourite character, and has so many issues, but my Finwe is also a grade A arsehole, inspired by a conversation, it was a wonder the Valar did not stand him down
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CollyWobbleKiwi/pseuds/Urloth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The incident that is spoken of is in a fic I've not posted yet (which has been sitting in my drafts for about 18 months now. Occasionally I get it out, look at it, and put it away again). But in regard to ages. A valinorian year in this verse is roughly ten of ours. Elves of Aman take 100 years to reach Adulthood. Seven and a half years of Valinor is roughly 75 years, and an awful mashup of a 13 year old and a 15 year old (elves don't age like us AT ALL a Headcanon Post I shall never write.). God can you imagine the hormones?</p><p>Finwe the prize arsehole and A+ father continues to wreck havok. Nolofinwe next, then Findis. THEN Finwe.</p></blockquote>





	1. Indis

“It is always for Fëanáro!” Indis hated how her voice came out, so sulky and juvenile when she mentioned her step-son, even when the matter was so important. Even when it was of vital importance; the fabric of the city at stake with its perilous peace about to rip away into civil chaos.

Already there were mobs assembling; the King’s Guard had, had to break up a number of brawls between Fëanáro’s supporters and Nolofinwë’s. If he left…

If he left there would be rioting.

“Yes,” Finwë agreed, “it is always for Fëanáro. You knew this when we married. When we courted I told you that Fëanáro is the priority of my life.”

“The priority of your life tried to murder the other priority of your life!” Or should be priority but Finwë was showing that his favouritism prevailed even in the face of heinous actions. It made Indis burn, it made her want to weep, but she kept her face straight and stiff.

“Threatened,” Finwë corrected in light tones that had no place in this conversation, folding another robe and handing it to the pale faced servant who was packing a travelling chest silently, “threatened Indis. But he would not have gone through, Fëanáro is a lot of fire but no heat.”

She chilled at his words. At his casual dismissal of a crime so utterly appalling that…

“He saved my throne once,” Finwë casually added, “I was to be ousted when I thought of marrying you. My court was so appalled at me, they doubted my very moral fibre that they pressed me hard to step down and have Fëanáro ascend the throne. He put a stop to all of that.”

Because he did not want to give up his carefree life, Indis thought sourly, the life he’d continued to live at the cost of Nolofinwë’s; her son carrying on the duties of the Heir without the title of High Prince to compensate him until she had at last petitioned Finwë to address the deficiency (and then had spent the next year with him casting glances at her from the corner of his eye as the aftershocks of Fëanáro's reaction to this continued to roll on.)

“I doubt very much you would have wanted to marry the  _former_  King of the Noldor,” Finwë added.

Indis choked. She chilled. Her heart broke.

“NO! How can you say that?!” her voice rose shrilly and she hated it.

“Ah you are right, I am sorry Indis, I am sorry. I have never doubted your love.”

But I doubt yours, she thought miserably. Oh but why was she trying to delude herself? Doubt had passed her long ago.

‘I care for you’ Finwë always told her, ‘I adore you,’

‘You make me so happy’

‘You bring light back to my life’

‘I  _care_  for you’

But never love. He loved their children (how he loved their children! So strongly and fiercely and eternally that his actions now made no sense.) He loved her singing. He loved her smile. He did not  _love_ her.

The warmth of his hand stroked her cheek, easing away tears, “I am so sorry Indis.”

She jerked away. “I am not coming with you. If you think I am coming to Formenos then you are a fool as well as a pathetic excuse for a father! You may abandon Nolofinwë when he needs you but I will not.”

His broad shoulders rippled in the tiniest of flinches.

There was brief, sour victory that she had scored at least one hit to his usual serene exterior, so cool and calm now in contrast to the furious rage after Manwë had passed his well thought out judgement.

“Good.”

The world froze.

“What?” she asked, her voice coming out as a torn squeak.

“Good,” Finwë repeated, “I am relieved. If you had said you would come with me then I would have had to ask you not to.”

The man she had married, the man she had loved since Cuiviénen, through his marriage to another woman, and his mourning of that woman which had never ceased, smiled at her so gently she wanted to scream. Wanted to dig her nails into his face and rip the expression apart.

“The time has come for us to part Indis,” Finwë picked up another robe, folding it efficiently, “the time has come that you go on with your life. I am sorry for how sorely I have used you at times. I am sorry that you have come to so much pain. With the removal of Fëanáro and myself from the city, I hope you can find some measure of peace and pleasure in the company of our grandchildren and children. And I-”

He gave the robe to the servant and began to pluck off his signet rings, and the heavy gold chain of duty around his neck with its thick, oval medallions set with star-rubies and diamonds.

He shrugged his shoulders to loosen them, sighing in relief at the loss of weight.  They were such wide, capable shoulders; even now they exuded strength and gave the impression of being able to carry the heaviest burdens.

“I am tired of being King. This is an excuse, really, to escape what is a prison for me.”

He placed the jewellery into her hands and closed her numb fingers over them, “for Nolofinwë.”

“You-” words failed her.

“Farewell Indis,” Finwë Noldoran told her, and showed her the door to his rooms as though she were a petitioning courtier and not his wife. 


	2. Arafinwë

 

“Father?”

Finwë’s workshop was lit up all reds and oranges from a blaze out of control.

“Father?!” Arafinwë pushed into the room where a clutter of furniture had been shoved up against the door to block it, and scrambled across a worktable and the shattered remains of a lathe.

“FATHER?!”

He screamed it in terror, seeing the forge left open and the white hot flames leaping within.

From the lone chair in the room a dark figure stirred and his heart, despairing at some unknown fear, lifted as his father raised his head. Finwë’s eyes were all black as they always were; the light in the room having caused the darkness to pull back to the dimensions usual for an iris instead of their usual near encompassing void.

They were clear.

Sane.

His skin was paled yes, but there was no frothing sweat as Irimë had described.

“Arafinwë,” his father stood slowly…ponderously, and his head tilted, the great fall of Finwë’s hair sliding over his shoulder, like black serpents roused from their nest, to fall in a single straight mane to near his father’s ankles.

This brought Arafinwë to a sudden halt. Where was the single long braid his father always wore when in his workshop? Not that Finwe spent much time in his workshop, especially not anymore; what precious little time that being King and then Father allowed, Finwë usually spent in a deep, torporous state to regain the energy he expended on the first two roles.

Finwë the carpenter and Finwë the jeweller had faded away almost completely.

“Father, Irimë said you were not well,” Arafinwë took a hesitant step forward…then two steps. If not the long braid then where were the many-layered braids of state? Where were the intricate garlanding of small braids into a second crown around his father’s head while the rest fell down his back undisturbed. This utterly untouched hair, unbraided and unbound was … intimate. It was vulnerable.

It was as he had never seen his father before, at least not unless it were near the resting hours, and he had interrupted Finwë in his isolated set of rooms shortly after a bath whilst his father was waiting for the impressive mane to dry.

The heat from the forge created a breeze that barely shifted the heavy mass so dark it had blue highlights in the light of Laurelin, and silver in the light of Teleperion.

“Irimë… your sister…she caught me when I was… upset,” Finwë drifted away from him, reclaiming the distance that was set between them when Arafinwë had frozen.

“O-oh?” Arafinwë asked, mouth dry, so dry in this furnace of a room.

“I asked for a rethinking of Fëanáro’s punishment,” Finwë picked up a gauge, turning it over in his hands, “to what I would have made it. I was refused it.”

 _Thank you Lord Manwë,_  Arafinwë thought and hoped his father did not hear.

“What would you have done father?” he asked instead.

His father snapped the gauge over his knee in an easy movement. Arafinwë flinched at the violence.

“I would have sent him to Lorien for at least four years, perhaps six depending on how distressed Lord Irmo found his mind to be,” his father replied, “it is how I have dealt with Fëanáro when his mind has shattered before. This exile will only exacerbate your brother’s illness Arafinwë. It will only make things worse.”

 _Half-brother_ , Arafinwë corrected resentfully, but was distracted by these new words like ‘illness’ that he had never heard his father use before in relation to Fëanáro. He was distracted by the fact that Finwë had …what… how to put this?…exiled his precious, priceless Fëanáro to Lorien, multiple times by the sound of it.

“I should have known better,” his father mourned, “I thought with Nerdanel… with his sons. And there were none of the usual signs of one of his breaks.”

“Father?” Arafinwë spun in a world suddenly strange and unfamiliar for all he knew it well.

“Your brother is not well Arafinwë, he has never been well, there is a deep wound in his mind and it has rotted; has festered and will not heal, no matter what we have tried,” towards the forge his father drifted, seemingly a shadow in this room of fire and light.

Arafinwë followed, scared again, and rested a hand on the pure white material of his father’s robe. The material was rich, incredibly rich; the sort that his father only wore when in the presence of a Vala. It had also been sweated through, and was stiff with dried sweat.

There was a shattering noise.

His father smiled, looking at his forge.

Arafinwë did not want to turn towards it. He was suddenly struck with a terror of what might be there. He did not want to see what was within the fire.

But he did anyway.

The shattering noise had come from an emerald, one of the purest he had ever seen in his life, but now it was ruined, rendering the snake it was set into blind for its other emerald eye had shattered as well.

“Father,” he said unsurely, “that is your  _crown_.”

“Yes,” Finwë answered, so serene in the face of such destruction, “as Lord Aulë made for the three of us, Ingwë, Elwë and I. There were three of them: a crown of eagles, a crown of swans, and my crown of serpents. Elwë never wore his. It did not fit Olwë, in fact it almost seemed to reject him.”

Finwë hummed softly, watching the ruined remains of his crown. It was gone, its thousands of biting, twisting golden serpents with their flower crowns and their emerald eyes, and the central, massive emerald of such clarity and beauty none could compare were wrecked, left to bubble on his forge which was alike wrecked.

“Father,” Arafinwë’s voice broke at this newest and utterly certain proof of his father’s rejection of Nolofinwë and thus the rest of them.

“I am not well either Arafinwë,” Finwë turned towards him suddenly, and his hand rose, stroking knuckles against Arafinwë’s cheek before cupping it as he had when he was a child, “like Fëanáro I have not been well for a very long time. But unlike Fëanáro I have been able to  _hide_  it. No longer though. I must go. For Fëanáro’s sake and my own. Your has mother helped. She soothed the pain, and built up my strength with her love so that I could carry on. I have sorely used her and her love for me. I hope that she will find a way to forgive me but I understand if she does not.”

 “Nolofinwë will do well; I think the coronet set with sapphires from Taniquetil will look especially beautiful on him no?”

Arafinwë nodded mutely, Finwë’s voice nothing more than a rumbling murmur. His father’s touch was fever hot, burning him, but dry; utterly sweated out. Every part of Arafinwë had focused down onto the touch, where it was slowly eating through the skin of his cheek and would surely meet the bone of his cheek soon.

 Finwë smiled and his hand fell away, leaving Arafinwë chilled to the very bone.

His father's fingers caught in some of Arafinwë's curls, drawing them out for a moment to shine radiantly gold and bronze in the light of the forge. Finwë smiled, stroking a strand between two fingers before letting go.

“I will miss you all. And I love you all. Equally. But Fëanáro needs me the most and I cannot remain in a city that seeks to tear me in half. So I must go. You will do well Arafinwë, let the words of your detractors not affect you.”

The black of Finwë’s gaze was darker than it should be. Arafinwë saw reflected in it the edge of an unfamiliar door creaking open, and a vicious instrument like a forge hammer grossly enlarged and tinged with violence; as the sword Fëanáro had threatened Nolofinwë with had been to cutlery knives, swing through the darkness.

“Goodbye my son. Try and stay your brothers. But if you cannot... rule wisely and cast from your heart hatred. Do not let the grief overwhelm you.”

“Fa-”

Finwë was gone.

“THE KING LEAVES!”

Arafinwë jerked upright from where he had fallen asleep on his father’s workroom floor, covered in a white robe for warmth that did not belong to him.

“THE KING LEAVES!” a servant called again.

Arafinwë scrambled over the wreckage blocking the doorway. He cut his hands on metal and wood both, and raced through the hallways.

In the courtyard his father was upon a horse, hair pristinely braided back in two long braids that had been coiled around one another like mating snakes, and secured at the end with a richly ornamented clasp of Telerin silver set with a massive cabochon ruby.

He wore no circlet, coronet, or crown. Instead upon his head was an unfamiliar-familiar shawl. Arafinwë had seen their ilk at a distance; this remnant of the Tatyarin culture of covering one’s head all the time with embroidered shawls. No Noldor covered their head constantly though, not unless in mourning.

This crimson and ebony shawl was a widower’s shawl. He had seen them before, at a distance, draped across the heads of the unfortunately bereaved (accidents still happened.) He had seen a portrait tucked away in the royal gallery of his father wearing one like it, Fëanáro, a youth almost fully grown, behind him and wearing the mourning shawl of red and white for a parent.

It was… a slap in their mother’s face. Arafinwë stood at a balcony and turned, searching, and sure enough saw them, his siblings and his mother on various balconies, watching as his father rode amongst the protective circle of retainers who would not desert him, out of the courtyard towards the road that ran all the way to Formenos.

“Father,” he breathed out, voice choked with hurt, “father why are you doing this?”

It was a question he never received an answer to.

Though he wondered in quieter, darker moments, rising from slumber from dreams half remembered of the missing crown of the Noldoran melting away, if the answer had not been given to him before his father had even left.

 


	3. Irimë

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident that is spoken of is in a fic I've not posted yet (which has been sitting in my drafts for about 18 months now. Occasionally I get it out, look at it, and put it away again). But in regard to ages. A valinorian year in this verse is roughly ten of ours. Elves of Aman take 100 years to reach Adulthood. Seven and a half years of Valinor is roughly 75 years, and an awful mashup of a 13 year old and a 15 year old (elves don't age like us AT ALL a Headcanon Post I shall never write.). God can you imagine the hormones?
> 
> Finwe the prize arsehole and A+ father continues to wreck havok. Nolofinwe next, then Findis. THEN Finwe.

Fëanáro was to be exiled.

**_Fëanáro was to be exiled!_ **

Sent away! Gone! The dark smear he spread upon the title of High Prince would be cleaned away. The foul stink in the air of metal and ash that never went away despite the pomades he used. And Father-

Irimë’s heart skipped a beat

Father would love her again without Fëanáro whispering his poison into Father’s ear.

Fëanáro had always been the wall through which Irimë had found no door, nor could scale. Not even her mother had been able to bend Finwë’s will once it had been set against Irimë, and they both knew it was Fëanáro who was to blame, bringing up Irimë’s momentary lapse of control all those years ago when she had truly been a child, too young to account for her actions.

Her mother tried to hopelessly reassure her from time to time, that her father’s love was not actually lost. Simply Finwë had become too used to turning her away, and she had to be the one to take the first steps to mend the breach that had seen her exiled from Tirion at the age of seven and half years of Valinor.

Her husband attempted to join in these attempts but what did a man who had never left Taniquetil (refused to leave Taniquetil) know of the turbulent king of the Noldor. He had only met Finwë Ňolodran for the first  time when he and Irimë had begun courting, and her father’s visits to Taniquetil were sporadic and he did not always visit her.

She did love her husband. But the man could be thick as three planks of wood together sometimes.

With Fëanáro gone, her mother’s words would be better heeded, and perhaps her father’s irrational favouritism of the eldest of his  _five_  children could be worn away. Fëanáro might not get such a welcome home in twelve years as he might expect.

She smoothed her hair back though there were few flyaways escaping her strict riding coiffure and knocked on his study door.

“Come in.”

As usual her heart stuttered and her stomach filled with butterflies at the rolling low tones.

She let herself in.

Her father was discarding a heavy robe of vermillion, the golden embroidery heavy at the sleeves and hems, leaving only the snow white tunic behind.

He rolled up his sleeves carefully, and she averted her eyes from the show of bloody red tattoos along his forearms, where the light of the Trees had been unable to fade them to a light rust red as the tattoos on his hands were.

As a child she had been morbidly fascinated by the tainting of his skin. Now she simply found it an unsettling reminder of their race’s barbaric origins. She held out a hope that one day her father would listen to her mother’s advice, and go lie for a while close to the trees where the light could erase the lines of crimson. There was even a special area set aside for people seeking such treatment of their bodily marring.

“Irimë, I did not know you were in Tirion,” her father said cordially but with no warmth, the black of his eyes flat as he glanced at her. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face, and his hair seemed strangely damp.

“Lalwendë father,” she tried to lightly correct him though she knew, as had been all the times before, she would not change his name for her. She had not heard her father’s name for her since the age of seven and a half Valinor years.

“Are you visiting your mother?” her father asked, as though he had not heard her.

“No… I came to visit you,” she had probably killed her horse to get here so fast. She wasn’t sure. She had shoved the reigns of the beast at the first stable boy she had come across and come looking for him.

She was suddenly very aware of her sweaty, horse-smelling appearance.

“Oh?” Finwë asked her with a bland smile.

Another drop of sweat ran down his face.

“And why would you do that?”

She floundered. She was not one for visiting for no reason. And even less did she visit her father despite her love for him. She could only stay close and know she had lost his love thanks to a youthful rash action and Fëanáro blowing it out of proportion.

“I…I heard about…Nolofinwë and..”

“Fëanáro. Yes.”

Finwë flexed his fingers, “I suppose I should have expected you to come gloat.”

She flinched.

“Father-”

“No mind. You will be pleased that the Valar are standing by their decision. You just missed Lord Aulë come to tell me they will not rethink their ruling or hear what mine would have been.”

Further sweat dripped down the proud arch of his nose from the slop of his equally proud brow. His eyes fluttered closed.

Thank goodness, she thought, but was more concerned with how her father was sweating as though it were the middle of summer, yet the doors to his balcony were wide open and the breeze flowing through was chilled beyond comfort.

“Do you feel even a hint of guilt for what you did Irimë? A smattering of revulsion at your actions?” he asked her suddenly. She startled, not having expected him to bring it up because he had ceased to try and talk to her about the incident since she had married.

“I was seven and a half Father an-”

“Seven and a half years of Aman,” her father corrected, “your body was becoming that of a maid’s, and your mind had begun to turn away from the pursuits of childhood. Meanwhile Tyelkomo was not even seen one year of Valinor, and had only just learnt to take a few frumbling steps by himself.”

Tyelkormo had been very young. Irimë admitted she had let her anger rule her, and that the toddler had suffered. She should not have done what she had done. Yes she knew that now. But it had not been anything that had not grown back. Save her relationship with her father.

Lock by lock of silver hair, as she’d shorn her squirming nephew bald with her embroidery scissors, she had as good as shorn away her father’s warm and once endless love for her. She had cut away the name Lalwendë to be burned with the horrid creamy hair which had enraged her so much.

“It grew back..”

“You wounded him, there was blood all over my library carpet…”

“Scalp-wounds bleed a lot,” and if Tyelkormo had not thrashed about her hands would not have slipped. If it had simply been his hair and she’d not drawn his precious blood it would have been forgotten within months. She watched further sweat drip slowly off his chin, the cloth across his back slowly darkening minutely with moisture.

“Scars remain. If you look for them you can find them beneath his hair. We can scar Irimë, especially when the wounds are dealt in childhood when our bodies still turn to the song of the Earth.”

She had not known that.

“Well I-”

“You do not feel guilt for your actions. Never mind. I know better than to try and draw blood from a rock.”

Now that was not fair! She knew she should not have done it! But the price she had paid was so entirely unfair for something that in the scheme of life had been minor and impermanent.

“Why did you do it Irimë? Why did you attack your infant nephew with a pair of embroidery scissors and cut off all of his hair?”

Because it had been silver like Míriel’s.

Primarily.

But it was more complicated than that.

Irimë had learnt early who was responsible for the misery of her family, namely Fëanáro. Míriel. As a naïve, romantic, passionate child she had hated the thought of the imposter, the woman who had stolen her mother’s place before Finwë could realise that his love was for Indis.

Hated seeing the portrait that had an almost shrine quality to it where it sat in her father’s study.

Míriel was a vanquished enemy, like of Finwë's tales of the East, but one who continued to inflict pain and suffering despite her death.

She knew better now of course, but still she thought the world would have been a better one should silver haired Míriel Serindë not have existed

Those had been tumultuous times. Fëanáro had been absent for a long time, but suddenly he was back in Finwë’s life, with little too-pretty, Nelyafinwë (a direct slap in Nolofinwë’s face every time anyone used the name), and Kanafinwë clinging to him, wide eyed and looking far too much like her father.

Her nephews had stolen enough of her father’s time, before Tyelkormo had been born. She had thought though, that once the fragile infant was strong enough, they’d leave again for a while and give them some peace. But Fëanáro and Nerdanel had decided to settle in Tirion proper, and whilst renovating their manse to their liking, Tyelkormo had spent his days with Finwë. 

Because Tyelkormo had inherited Finwë's light intolerant eyes, the infant could not be left to play with a caretaker outside as his brothers were. Turkafinwë had also been a fussy, delicate infant who had cried all the time because of the light, and refused at times to take milk which had left his health not the best. Her father’s quarters were furnished to block the light out with the bonus of a caring grandfather to watch him for any signs of ill health.

Suddenly Irimë saw even less of her father unless she sought him out.

Which she did.

Her father would always be with Tyelkormo when she found him. Tyelkormo who repulsed her, for he had been a dumb, smelly child with a stupid sloppy grin, with drool constantly dripping from his chin. Finwë was always in the library or his rooms, playing with Tyelkormo on the floor, kneeling there with his grand robes he had been wearing for the morning court discarded or rumbled around his knees.

And if not that she would find him gently singing to the sleeping child, low rumbling songs of a rolling language she didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. No matter which though, his hands would flutter out, rust-red fingers with an eighteen pointed star in the palm and bands of patterning on the back, to caress an errant silver curl back into place.

She had hated it! Hated it! Hated the child remnant of  _her_ that should not have even existed was in Irimë's home, taking away Irimë's father and not only from Irimë but from Indis with every reminder of  _her_ and her  _silver hair!_   Of course her resentment would have found a way to bubble out.

He shouldn’t have left Tyelkormo playing alone in the library anyway! He might have crawled into a fireplace!

“Irimë now is not the time,” her father interrupted her thoughts, “I am very angry, and would like some peace.”

She thought of arguing and standing her ground. Thought of asking him if he realised that his precious firstborn had  **threatened to kill Nolof** i **nwë.**  But then she saw the trembling in his hands as he undid the great bracelets on his wrists, and removed the torque about his neck.Saw how white his lips were, pulled back against his teeth in a not-quite grimace.

It alarmed her, that and the sweating.

“Are you well father?” she asked helplessly.

“No,” he replied shortly, “and I would like if you left.”

“Alright,” she agreed weakly, swallowing around the lump in her throat and turning away. Perhaps she should find Arafinwë and tell him of the sweating.

“Lalwendë I do love you, you know,” she stopped in her tracks, heart trying to leap out of her chest, disbelieving and hopping at the same time as spun back.

He was holding a priceless vase from a master craftsman from the base of Taniquetil. She recognised the piece; so thin it was nearly transparent, with a blush and sheen to it like a rose tinted pearl. She had salivated over it when it had been presented to her father as a begetting day gift from Ingwë.

It was a beautiful vase.

“I love you too Father and I-”

“I love you,” her father said, flattening her words down with his own, “but until I can see that you properly feel responsible and guilty for your actions I cannot give you that love. I am sorry Lalwendë, I wish we had more time.”

He hefted the vase as thought checking its weight.

Her stomach clenched.

“You may leave now,” Finwë told her.

She fled, hearing the vase smash against one of his study walls behind her.

Arafinwë. She would find Arafinwë! Father had gone mad!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before the bashing and the anon hate begins. One sided version of events, from Irime's perspective only. Also she is nothing more then a name in a book. We can all make up her backstory and character as we wish.


End file.
